


Sleep Sickness

by Lanceeselhombre



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Universe, Cuddling, Galra Keith (Voltron), Gen, Imagine the relationships between the characters as you want, Keith being carried around the castle by Shiro is a pure concept, Sick Character, Sick Fic, how does one tag, sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 11:41:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13189338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lanceeselhombre/pseuds/Lanceeselhombre
Summary: The clicking of Shiro’s boots echoed softly in the castle’s hallways as he walked through them, cutting through the silence with every step. The castle was always quiet, but at night it became absolutely silent with no one awake to make the noise that made the ship seem habitable during the day. Now it sounded dead, vacant. But the silence was soft with the dimmed lighting of the ship’s simulated night cycle and the resulting softer shade of off white the walls and floor appeared to be./////Just a cute oneshot about Keith being sick.





	Sleep Sickness

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing. 
> 
> I LIVE. (Sorry iVe been having writer’s block.) 
> 
> So this is based off of an rp I did where Galra could get something called ‘Sleep Sickness.’ I wanted to write a fic about it.
> 
> None of my beta readers have Betad (is that how you spell it?) this yet.

The clicking of Shiro’s boots echoed softly in the castle’s hallways as he walked through them, cutting through the silence with every step. The castle was always quiet, but at night it became absolutely silent with no one awake to make the noise that made the ship seem habitable during the day. Now it sounded dead, vacant. But the silence was soft with the dimmed lighting of the ship’s simulated night cycle and the resulting softer shade of off white the walls and floor appeared to be.

The black paladin turned a corner into another hallway and started to walk down it, heading toward the part of the castle where the younger paladin’s bedrooms were. It was inconvenient that all of their bedrooms were so far apart from each other despite the fact that the spacing was meant to make it harder for intruders to kill everyone on the ship in their sleep. The spacing tactic made sense, but when he needed to walk across the entire ship to get to another one of the paladin’s rooms it seemed incredibly stupid.

The soft clicking ceased when Shiro stood in front of Keith’s door. He pressed his hand to the handprint next to it and watched as the door swished open, not bothering to knock. He wouldn't get a response if he knocked anyway, there was no point to it. He stepped inside the dark room and let the door close behind him. His eyes landed on the figure hidden under the blankets on the bed and watched for any movement indicating the other knew he was there. There was none.

Shiro stepped over to the bed, purposefully walking so that his boots didn't click anymore. After a few seconds his eyes adjusted to the dark and he could see how Keith was lying. He was turned on his side and facing away from the wall, piled underneath so many blankets that the exact position of his body couldn't be clearly seen. The blankets were pulled up to his chin, making only his face visible. However, it was hard to see anything behind his hair, which had fallen over his face at some point during the night and was now obscuring his eyes and cheek from view. He was more or less how Shiro left him last night.

The man gently sat down on the bed next to the teen and brushed his hair out of his face. His expression was peaceful and relaxed, but there were dark bags underneath his eyes showing just how tired he was. The calm on his face was only because he was dead to the world, when he was awake his eyebrows were pinched together and his lips were turned down in an uncomfortable grimace.

For three days now, Keith had been sleep sick. No one had ever heard of the name of the disease until Coran looked it up in the castle’s broad database of medical information. According to the ship, ‘sleep sickness’ was a disease that only Galra could contract (and half Galra too apparently) that forced a person’s body to shut down and go into an induced sleep-coma. Luckily, it went away on its own and wasn't deadly as long as the person was taken care of, so the team didn't have to worry about trying to find a medicine for their sick teammate.

However, the disease had some pretty horrible symptoms. The most obvious was the thick sleep Keith was almost always stuck in. He would stay asleep if he wasn't bothered, which left him unable to care for himself; and the rest of the team had to do it for him instead. He couldn't keep anything in his stomach for more than a few hours, so Coran had to find another way to get food and water into him so he didn't wither. Probably the worst part of the sickness was the constant aching pain that no pain killer could dull. Although he didn't feel the pain while he was sleeping, which was a plus.

But, he could be woken up, and after a few hours of seeing Keith suffer through his symptoms everyone decided letting him sleep through it was for the best. When the teen was awake, he was barely lucid, had no energy- so little that even talking was a function he couldn't muster- and was obviously uncomfortable in addition to the pain. At first it was just from the general feeling of being sick and him feeling gross from being unable to shower (no one was willing to try to put him through that) but after a few days of being immobile his muscles and joints were stiffening and tightening, if only to add a little more pain to the mix.

Shiro gently pulled the blankets off the sleeping teen and rolled him onto his back, being careful not to accidentally wake him up. He may be in an induced deep sleep, but he could still wake up if he was jostled. Unfortunately, Shiro almost always accidentally woke him up during what the team started to call ‘cycles.’

‘Cycle’ was just a simple term for when Shiro took care of Keith, brought him to the med bay to get a calorie shot and an IV for fluids (somehow Alteans never developed anything like an IV, so Shiro had to explain it to them- they were horrified by the idea of sticking needles in someone’s veins) and dropped him off with one of the other paladins. The others simply stayed in the same room as him while he slept to make sure he didn't overheat or freeze and to tell Shiro if he needed something. Shiro was the one put in charge of his main care, since it was also decided it was better if only one person got to see the red paladin so vulnerable.

Once Keith was on his back Shiro gently pulled his shirt off and replaced it with a new one, doing the same with his pants.

After the man finished switching the teen’s clothes he took his hand in his own and started rubbing his palm with his thumbs. Yet another thing he had to do, he had to massage his muscles and bend his joints to keep them from completely seizing up. He started with his hands, then his arms, shoulders, neck, middle, back, and so on until he exercised every part of Keith’s body. It was painstakingly slow and time consuming, but it would be worth it when Keith finally recovered.

An hour of rubbing the blood back into Keith’s muscles and bending, rotating, and twisting his joints, Shiro finally finished his task. He let the teen lay undisturbed for a moment while he grabbed a hairbrush to untangle the mop of hair on his head. He sat down on the bed again and pulled Keith by his underarms to lean against his shoulder, the teen’s forehead resting heavily against his collarbone. Once Shiro was sure he wouldn't slide he began to gently pull the brush through his hair, making sure to firmly grip the sections he was untangling as to not make the pulling painful.

Shiro managed to unknot Keith’s hair so the brush ran through his locks smoothly after a few minutes of work. He put the brush down and pulled Keith into his lap, his thighs on either side of Shiro’s hips. After that he positioned Keith’s arms over his shoulders and tucked his head into the crook of his shoulder where it wouldn't lull and hurt his neck. He hooked his arms underneath the teen’s legs as he stood, then bounced Keith up so his thighs were straddling his ribcage and wrapped his arms underneath his butt so he wouldn't slide down.

Almost instantaneously, the man heard a soft huffed groan. He smiled softly even though his expression couldn't be seen in the darkness and patted the boy’s thigh apologetically. “I'm sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up.” He apologized with a whisper, trying not to overload his fellow paladin with a loud voice so soon after he woke up.

Keith replied with another breathy huff, this one more high pitched and strained, like he was in pain. Shiro’s smiled faded into a sympathetic frown at the sound. “Still hurts?” He assumed, figuring the pain from the sleep sickness was catching up to him as he gained consciousness. He wondered how much more this would hurt for the half Galra if he was completely awake and not in his hall lucid state.

The teen weakly nodded his confirmation into Shiro’s shoulder. Shiro sighed and moved one of his arms to rub his back in slow, soothing circles. “I'm sorry kiddo.” He whispered.

He stayed like that for a moment, letting Keith orientate himself in the darkness of the room before he exposed him to the light in the hallway, half hoping he would fall asleep again after a few minutes of being cradled and comforted. He knew it was in vain though, Keith struggled to fall asleep once he was woken up because of the pain and overall discomfort of being sleep sick, and it took the disease awhile to force him back under. The most he could do was make him as comfortable as possible until he fell asleep again.

“Are you cold?” Shiro asked lowly. Keith had been cold when he was sleeping last night, but since most of his body was flush up against the older man he might not need anything else to keep him warm. A gentle shake of his head confirmed his thoughts. He smiled. “Okay.”

Shiro stepped towards the door, easily balancing Keith’s added weight from days of practice. He opened the door and walked out into the hallway before he placed his free arm underneath Keith again to keep him steady as he walked. He squirmed around sometimes when he was carried and despite his severely weakened state he was surprisingly able to wiggle out of Shiro’s arms.

It wasn't that he wanted to be put down or anything like that. It was just how he coped with the aching pain in his body. Fidgeting around somehow helped him deal with the pain, which no one minded. Although when he was being carried around it was a bit of a problem. It reminded Shiro vaguely of carrying around a fussy toddler that would kick, push, shove, and climb to try to get out of their parent’s arms. Only, Keith was much harder to keep a hold of.

That was why Shiro sat him on his ribs and carried him like a young child. He tried carrying him bridal style at first- and it worked well- but when the pain started getting worse and Keith started struggling more and more often he was constantly worried he would drop him. A fireman’s carry was just mean in this situation, so he hadn't even considered that and immediately switched to carrying Keith like he was now. It was much easier to keep ahold of him this way. It was also easier to open doors, grab things, etc, as well as it offered the teen a bit of comfort to be constantly hugged while he was carried around the castle.

Speaking of squirming, a few seconds after Shiro started walking down the hallway Keith shifted uncomfortably in his arms and made a small, pained sound. Shiro was quick to respond and gently smoothed a hand up and down Keith’s back, aiming to soothe. While he couldn’t stop his pain, he could calm his resulting stress. “Shh...” He whispered softly.

Keith made another pained whimper, but stopped squirming and settled down. Shiro continued to rub his back as he walked, letting the motion soothe him until the small noises he’d been making dwindled and stopped all together.

The man smiled softly when he felt the teen’s body slowly becoming dead weight in his arms as he began falling asleep again. “We’re almost there.” He whispered encouragingly. Just a few more hallways and they’d be at Hunk’s room, where he could go back to sleep and be undisturbed for another few hours.

After another minute he arrived at his destination, gently shifting Keith’s weight onto his Galra arm to press his palm to the scanner beside the doorway. The panel glowed a soft green and the door swished open, revealing the darkness of the room inside. The only light came from a small tablet on the right side of the room, where the only inhabitant was quietly tinkering with a few pieces of metal and a balmeran crystal.

“Hey.” Hunk greeted with a whisper, keeping his voice low to not disturb his sick friend. He temporarily abandoned his project in favor of looking up at the two in the doorway. “How is he?” He wondered, tone just as soft.

Shiro stepped fully into the room, allowing the door to close behind him and shut out the light of the hallway. “Still hurting.” He replied quietly. “He got fluids at dinner, so he’ll be fine until morning.”

Hunk nodded and went back to his tinkering. “Okay. I’m just finishing this extra battery and then I’m going to sleep.” He said.

“Don’t take too long.” The black paladin reminded gently as he walked over to the bed. “Tomorrow we have to be at a diplomatic meeting after breakfast.” He sat down on the edge of the mattress and carefully leaned down, trying to lay the teen down without causing him to stir.

Hunk hummed. “I know. I won’t be long.” He promised.

Shiro laid Keith down on the bed among the blankets, then gently began working his arms from around his neck. Instead of loosening, the limbs tightened their hold on him, refusing to let go. When the man tried to pull away again Keith gave a small whine, not wanting to let go.

Shiro sighed. “Don’t want me to put you down?” He guessed softly.

Keith gave a sound of confirmation, so Shiro straightened up again and stood with the teen in his arms. Keith quieted again, more content to be held until he fell asleep than to be laid on a bed by himself.

Shiro sighed again at his stubbornness, but decided to humor him and continued to hold him. If Keith wasn’t sick he wouldn’t be asking for attention like this. He usually scoffed at the idea of anything more than a hug, he must be feeling absolutely miserable to be this clingy.

Having nothing better to do while he waited for Keith to dose, Shiro walked over to Hunk’s desk and stood off to his side and watching him finish what he was working on. He was quiet, not striking up a conversation with his teammate in hopes that Keith would drift off faster in the almost-quiet of the bedroom.

Hunk finished the battery after another ten minutes and stood to put away his tools, leaving the battery on the middle of his desk were he couldn’t lose it. He made sure everything was put away in its proper place before he walked back to Shiro to take Keith, since he was going to watch him for the next few hours.

“I’ve got ‘im.” The yellow paladin whispered as he gently slipped his hands under his friend’s arms. The teen gave a small sound to protest as he was lifted into a different person’s arms, but neither of the healthy people in the room paid it any mind.

Hunk softly patted Keith’s back. “Hey Keith, it’s me.” He whispered as he waved at Shiro, bidding him goodbye.

‘See you later.’ He mouthed before he turned, moving to the bed so he could lay down with Keith resting on top of him. He covered them both with his blanket, whispering small comforts to his friend that Shiro couldn’t hear.

Shiro smiled at the display and waved back at Hunk before he turned and left, stepping out quickly to keep the hallway lights from flooding the room for too long.

Done with his job for now, the black paladin headed towards his own room, ready to get some sleep before he had to be up again in the morning to do it again.

He just hoped Keith would be feeling a little better by then. 


End file.
